combine UITextFields input into one UITtextField - iphone

Question

Im new to xcode and objective c. I have asked this question three times and still can't find a good method or answer. I have several uitextfields that accept user input and adds it to the combinedtextField in order of IBAction used.ie user inputs big in one field,bad in the next one and boy in the third and the result is big bad boy in the combinedtextField.
-(IBAction)addtextField1: (id)sender
{
combinedtextField.text = [NSMutableString stringWithFormat:#"%# %#",
combinedtextField.text,textField1.text];
}
-(IBAction)addtextField2: (id)sender
{
combinedtextField.text = [NSMutableString stringWithFormat:#"%# %#",
combinedtextField.text, textField2.text];
}
-(IBAction)addtextField3:(id)sender
{
combinedtextField.text = [NSMutableString stringWithFormat:#"%# %#",
combinedtextField.text,textField3.text];
}
Now this is where it gets interesting.I need to be able to remove the selected text from the combinedtextField.
-(IBAction)removetextField1:(id)sender
{
//////////????????????////////////////
}
-(IBAction)removetextField2: (id)sender
{
//////////????????????////////////////
}
-(IBAction)removetextField3: (id)sender
{
//////////????????????////////////////
}
If I tap the removetextField2 button it would remove the corresponding text(bad) from the combinedtextField and then it would read (big boy)
Ive looked into nsarrays,nsdictionarys and other methods and have got no where.
Need some way of possibly tagging the input and removing it that way. Example code would be great and very much appreciated.

Answer 1

You've left out some important details about your app, so I'm making some guesses about how it should work.
Perhaps what you should do is keep a mutable array of all of the fragments that have been added to the combined string:
#implementation MyViewController {
    NSMutableArray *fragments_;
}
- (void)viewDidLoad {
[super viewDidLoad];
fragments_ = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init];
}
When one of the add buttons is tapped, you append the corresponding field's text to the array and recompute the combined string:
- (IBAction)addTextField1:(id)sender {
[fragments_ addObject:textField1.text];
[self updateCombinedTextField];
}
- (void)updateCombinedTextField {
combinedTextField.text = [fragments componentsJoinedByString:#" "];
}
When one of the remove buttons is tapped, you try to remove the corresponding field's text from the fragments array and recompute the combined string:
- (IBAction)removeTextField1:(id)sender {
[fragments_ removeObject:textField1.text];
[self updateCombinedTextField];
}
That will remove all occurrences of field 1's text from the fragments array. If you just want to remove one instance, you will need to use indexOfObject: (or one of its variants) followed by removeObjectAtIndex:.

Answer 2

You can't do it in a very trivial way (without anything to add, just 1stroke magic function). But, there's the easy way, which i'd possible gone for.
If you don't need to do it a lot of times, and / or the text is quite small (not like a 500 pages book), then:
Create a boolean array named mark, and mark[i] should mark the i'th text field as 'added'. Then, create a function named reloadCombinedTextField, which creates it again, depended of the mark array. (if mark[i] == true, then we add a textfield's text, otherwise not)
Then, just mark or unmark the needed text fields in every function and call the reload function in the end of every call.
Altho, there is another way, but it can be wrong in situations where your text fields have the same text. The thing is, you just search in your combined text field the text from selected text field (for example, with [NSString rangeOfString] method) and remove it.
If you are going to do it often and the text is really big, then it goes much more complicated. But i'm quite sure, that you won't do this on iOS.